Exclusive Audio: Todd Haynes on "I'm Not There"

The latest issue of Rolling Stone features Greil Marcus' in-depth Q&A with Todd Haynes, director of I'm Not There — the new film in which six different actors portray Bob Dylan. The interview was originally conducted before an audience at the Telluride Film Festival, the day after I'm Not There premiered. Below, check out audio excerpts from the interview:

Haynes talks about the concept of identity in his films — including Dylan's status as identity-changer, and how the Sixties may have marked been the beginning of a national "identity crisis."

Haynes talks about the idea of "queerness" in his films, touching on both Andy Warhol and Pentecostal fundamentalist Christianity.

Marcus and Haynes answer an audience question about the role of Dylan's music in the film.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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